We performed a comparison between Hillstone E-Series and Sophos XG based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Firewalls solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Initial setup is straightforward. There weren't too many issues with setting it up. It takes one hour or so."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiGate are it is one of the most mature firewalls in the UTM bundle."
"I like how we can achieve total integration."
"Fortinet FortiGate is scalable for our users. Right now, we have almost 70 users. We do not have any plan to increase our usage of FortiGate. For maintaining the firewall solution, one staff member is enough."
"The security fabric is excellent."
"It's very good and very stable for businesses. It works very well."
"It's super reliable. I don't think I've ever had a reliability issue with it."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone E-Series are its hardware capacity, innovation, and the throughput that the hardware can take."
"Very reliable solution with good scalability and straightforward implementation."
"Working with the Hillstone E-Series has, from a remote perspective, allowed me to give my clients a secure connectivity."
"The most valuable feature of the Hillstone E-Series is its user-friendliness."
"Five out of five ROI."
"This solution has two main features that we find very valuable; a threat-intelligence option, and a web/application filtering option. The technical support team are very good and very quick."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It only took a few hours to deploy."
"The installation is easy, we have not had any complaints from our customers."
"It is very easy to use. You can configure and monitor everything from one unique dashboard."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"What I like about his program, is that it is easy to use and easy to manage."
"Compared to other firewalls that I had looked at, I thought Sophos was the better solution. It just seems to be easier to manage versus Cisco, Fortinet, or one of the other options I was looking at."
"The user authentication rules are very useful."
"There are many features. VPN, firewalling, and intrusion detection are the main features that are most useful for us at this time."
"Reporting is the most valuable feature."
"We've had good experiences with technical support."
"It should have a better pricing plan. It is too expensive. It should also have a more granular view of the attack. I don't have FortiAnalyzer, and it is difficult for me to have a complete view when there is an attack on my server."
"It should come integrated or have its own type of network monitor tool in a module. There should just be one package, and you are good to go."
"The solution needs to improve its integration with cybersecurity."
"Fortinet already improved FortiGate, but in the current market, many brands of security devices have improved together. Fortinet still needs to catch up with market standards. Fortinet is lacking in features in comparison to competitors."
"Web security solutions can be improved."
"The product does need better support in the cloud environment. It's not exactly cloud-native right now."
"The biggest "gotcha" is that if the client purchases what they call the UTM shared bundle, which has unified threat management on both, it's not as easy to manage if you have more than one firewall."
"I have to say that the initial setup was complex. The deployment took a few days to get set up. Initially, we were using an IPVanish. We switched to this tool since we thought it would be easier. But it turns out it wasn't easier to set up and run."
"Support from Hillstone E-Series has a shortcoming that needs improvement."
"The tool provides just a general report. It does not provide a granular report. Hence, the tool should work on its reporting feature."
"SSL VPN license cost is not cheap."
"The tool needs to improve its price."
"The current usage reporting is very basic."
"I am not sure if this solution offers active directory integration. Adding that feature will definitely be an advantage."
"The solution doesn't have a web proxy built into the system like Sophos. This is something they should work to change."
"Having frequent live webinars on a monthly basis would really help."
"I would like to have more artificial intelligence in the web monitoring service that comes with it. It should alert us when particular events happen. It has already got some of that. I know that it is more of a service, and Sophos is already looking at it. It is called SIEM."
"The only issue that Sophos XG now needs to improve is the product's reporting capability."
"Support for this product is something that is really important, and it needs to improve."
"When upgrading the firewalls, the process could be easier."
"On reports, they sometimes give a summary, but it lists different users as unknown. There are times that I really want to know which user or which IP is causing a problem."
"Scalability it is a bit limited. We did a sizing exercise before the purchase. But that was just to fit our current needs. There was no room for having an option to upgrade the device. The only option that we have if we are grow in the near future, is to go for another model with higher specs, which is actually more expensive. In other words it doesn't have that modularity ."
"We had a difficult time assigning IP addresses to specific MAC addresses."
"All of the options should be available when I renew my subscription for the year. As it is now, there are some limitations."
Hillstone E-Series is ranked 33rd in Firewalls with 9 reviews while Sophos XG is ranked 7th in Firewalls with 192 reviews. Hillstone E-Series is rated 9.0, while Sophos XG is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Hillstone E-Series writes "A user-friendly and marketable solution with a virtual switching capability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Sophos XG writes "Easy to use and deploy with an improved pricing structure in place". Hillstone E-Series is most compared with Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, OpenVPN Access Server, Netgate pfSense, Sangfor SSL VPN and Meraki MX, whereas Sophos XG is most compared with Netgate pfSense, OPNsense, Sophos XGS, SonicWall TZ and Sophos UTM. See our Hillstone E-Series vs. Sophos XG report.
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